Cuomo Gets Deals on Tenure and Evaluations of Teachers

A hostile winter of speeches, rallies and barbs between Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and teachers’ unions ended in compromise on a variety of fronts, with the governor winning some changes in the way teachers are evaluated and granted tenure, and in how the state deals with chronically struggling schools.

Among the education-law changes approved by the State Senate and Assembly late Tuesday night as part of a package of budget-related bills, perhaps the most ferociously fought over has been about teacher evaluations.

Last year 96 percent of teachers were rated either effective or highly effective, the two highest ratings, and Mr. Cuomo put a big red target on the current evaluation system in January when, during his State of the State address, he called it “baloney.”

In its place, he proposed tying 50 percent of a teacher’s rating to student test scores and reducing the weight of principals’ observations, which tended to be favorable to teachers.

Unions, teachers and parents took to the sidewalks, waving picket signs, to oppose the changes, which they said would increase what they already considered to be an overreliance on standardized tests.

The final bill does not include percentages for how much particular measurements will count — those details will be left to the State Education Department. But it does make it somewhat more difficult for teachers to achieve the highest rating, and it mandates low ratings in certain circumstances. Principals can still weigh in with their observations, but so must an evaluator from outside the school.

Mr. Cuomo also succeeded in attaching consequences to the ratings, especially for those seeking tenure. New teachers will have to wait four years before they are eligible for tenure, rather than the current three, and in that period, they must receive three ratings of effective or highly effective. Districts can move to fire tenured teachers with at least two consecutive ratings of ineffective, the lowest assessment.

Jenny Sedlis, the executive director of StudentsFirstNY, an education advocacy group that supports stricter teacher evaluations, celebrated the changes to the tenure process, which she said was “long considered the third rail in Albany.”

“Governor Cuomo laid out an ambitious agenda and delivered key education reforms, despite the best efforts of entrenched special interests,” Ms. Sedlis said.

Another heated issue was the future of chronically underperforming schools. Depending on how long a school has been struggling, local districts will have either one or two years to make “demonstrable improvement”; what qualifies as improvement will be laid out in a plan approved by the State Education Department. If a school fails to improve, it will be placed in a receivership — managed by a nonprofit organization, for example, or perhaps a charter school.

Local districts, particularly New York City, saw the proposal as a weakening of their control. In the last two weeks, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, turned up at several struggling schools to highlight the ways they said the city was already trying to turn them around.

The governor’s proposals to create a tax credit for donations to private-school scholarship funds and public schools; to increase the number of charter schools; and to extend college tuition aid to undocumented students were left out of the budget package because the Assembly, which is led by Democrats, and the Republican-led Senate could not agree on them. They could be taken up by lawmakers this spring.

Even after the deals were reached over the weekend, Karen Magee, the president of the statewide teachers’ union, New York State United Teachers, indicated that she would keep fighting. She said the union would encourage parents to have their children opt out of taking state tests to try to subvert the ratings system.

And Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the New York City teachers’ union, said its campaign against Mr. Cuomo’s education agenda would continue, even on issues that pass in the budget.

“Things got pushed out because of what we did, but in the end, because of the power that the governor has during the budget process in our state, we knew things were going to get through,” Mr. Mulgrew said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Cuomo Gets Deals on Tenure and Evaluations of Teachers. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe